Building Community: Integrating Communication Curriculum between Courses in Other Disciplines or "Speaking across the Curriculum."

Hoffs, Marilyn J.

Colleges across the nation have long been investigating the need for an oral communication component in the graduation requirements. Hence the question: should communication departments in colleges and universities advocate "speaking across the curriculum?" If the objective of education is to graduate people who can discover information and share that information with others, then, of course, it makes sense to teach them the aspects of oral communication and require that they apply this in all courses, not just in the communication department. Capstone courses or other courses taught by professors in more than one discipline would be one means of integrating communication into the larger college curriculum. Such a course is offered at the 10 Maricopa Community Colleges in Arizona. The advantages of a speaking across the curriculum program is that it increases the number of opportunities students have for practicing their oral skills. However, there are disadvantages to such an approach. First, professors in some disciplines, the sciences for instance, do not have the time to work oral communication into their courses. Second, some professors simply do not have the skills to teach oral communication, having never taken so much as one speech class in their careers. Third, speech practice in every class could be redundant. Fourth, "speaking across the curriculum" opens the door to a line of thinking that assumes anyone can teach communication and therefore raises questions about whether a basic communication course needs to be taught at all. (TB)